Ahmad Shadid’s Departure as io.net CEO Is Not Because of Previous Allegations

Ahmad Shadid, the founder of the decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) protocol io.net, has announced that he is stepping down as CEO “effective immediately.”

He said that despite the allegations against him in the past, his resignation as CEO is to allow io.net to move forward without interference.

COO Tory Green Takes Over

“Today I am stepping down as the CEO of http://io.net, effective immediately.” Shadid posted to X on June 9.

He added that the current Chief Operating Officer, Tory Green, will assume the role of CEO, stating, “While there have been allegations regarding my past, I want to emphasize that I am stepping down as CEO to allow io.net to move forward without distraction and to focus on its growth and success.”

$IO Nation, Today I am stepping down as the CEO of https://t.co/pI9FcfdM87, effective immediately. https://t.co/pI9FcfdM87 has grown to be one of the fastest growing decentralized AI companies in the world. After careful consideration, I have decided that it is in the best…

— SHADID | $IO™ (@shadid_io) June 9, 2024

Shadid also revealed his intention to donate one million of io.net’s soon-to-be-released tokens from his personal holdings to the Internet of GPUs Foundation to “help grow the ecosystem.”

In a separate post on X, Tory Green responded to Shadid’s announcement, noting that under Ahmad’s leadership, io.net has evolved into one of the fastest-growing AI companies globally. Green emphasized that moving forward, the company will continue to pursue Ahmad’s vision of becoming the world’s largest AI compute network and making AI accessible worldwide.

I am honored to step into the role of CEO for https://t.co/OigQQimgcD, effective immediately.

Under @shadid_io ‘s leadership, https://t.co/OigQQimgcD has grown into one of the fastest growing AI companies in the world.

Going forward, we will continue to execute on the vision… https://t.co/12vRHJTMRG

— tory.io 🦾 (@MTorygreen) June 9, 2024

Green highlighted the company’s achievements, noting that the network has onboarded approximately 20,000 cluster-ready GPUs and is serving AI companies like WonderAI, Krea, and Leonardo with end-to-end AI inference and model training workloads.

Green also assured stakeholders that the company’s operations had been smoothly transitioned under his oversight and mentioned that more details regarding the leadership team changes would be shared in the coming days.

IO Token Launch and Concerns

The io.net token, IO, will debut on Binance’s Launchpool on June 11 at 12:00 am UTC, with an initial release of 95,000,000 tokens and a total supply capped at 800,000,000 tokens.

Meanwhile, Shadid’s resignation has caused concerns that he might dump his IO tokens at launch and disappear. “Looks like a rug. He got his coins now he dumps on launch and disappears,” noted one X user.

However, Shadid has addressed these concerns by stating that his tokens are locked for four years and that no investor, adviser, or team member can sell their monthly vested tokens until June 2025.